Jesus hung out for forty days after his resurrection, the Gospels tell us, instructing and inspiring his followers to believe the impossible, and to act as though they believed it. It’s hard to convince the world all things are possible with God, while holed up in a room in Jerusalem for fear of your life. So Jesus kept showing up when least expected, and going through the lessons again. Once more, with feeling…
Jesus said to his disciples, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
This time he does more than tell them where they’ve been – he tells them where they’re going: to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations, starting from Jerusalem. In the Acts version of the Pentecost story, Jesus gives a fuller itinerary: “… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The book of Acts shows us how closely the spreading of the Good News followed that trajectory.
Why do we so often need to be reminded of where we’ve been in order to get on with where we’re going? I’ve grown impatient of late with the daily office readings from the Hebrew Bible – it strikes me more and more as scriptures for an ancient, alien people, not for today’s followers of Christ. And yet I know why I continue to read it, and why we read it in church on Sundays, why we do well not to get too far away from it: it reminds us where we stand in the big picture of God’s courtship of an alienated humanity. We may not always like the way those ancient people spoke of God, or the words or motives they attributed to God, but the overarching story is one of love. As Jesus reminded his followers of what he'd taught them in the recent past, we too need to be reminded.
What is your relationship with the Old Testament? Close? Distant? Fond? Suspicious?
Does it help you to proclaim forgiveness and wholeness to the people you know?
How about Jesus’ story – how do you connect with that?
If you’re not in the habit of reading the bible regularly, spend some time with a small chunk today.
The bible is our anchor as we grow in faith and in the love of God. It tethers us to a rich tradition and a vast and diverse community of faith, living and gone before. Consider it the rearview mirror of faith – if we want to go forward in God’s mission as Jesus tells us, we have to keep our eyes on the road and at the same time be aware of what’s behind us. It’s called driving.
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